Thursday, February 09, 2006

This. Is. Out. Of. My. Hands.

Hi everybody, it's jbreitling. I'm new here. This seems like an obvious place to start:

In the year 20-oh-six it is not worth explaining everything that unknown Wayne, Penn.-based hardcore act Kam Fong was and was not. Time ignored the band in its '90s un-heyday and Time continues to ig... Hey, isn't Project Runway on? Even while the act was (sniffing) solvent(s) it was primarily legendary. Meaning that so much of the Fong experience was imaginary, and what wasn't imaginary was opiatedly surreal. And what wasn't imaginary or opiatedly surreal was just weird or f'd up. Camden Fog? Wrangler partial-elastic? Holzvarth? Corn liquor? Unkempt people with appellations like Cooch, Drums, Burt Rujz (alias "Paul Rugger"), Postman, not to mention scenesters like Dust-Smokin' and The Farge or… Like I said, it didn't make much sense then, and it can't translate into the now for those who weren't there.

What the record will show is that Kam Fong created punishing music with insane chops and often remarkably powerful lyrics. The full package boasted equal parts Black Flag, Frank Zappa and Kiss and had near-analogs in contemporary work by Don Caballero and June of 44. I present three tracks to you today. Many of you may know the Fastbacker, but many of you may not know that the guy can four track like a mofo. The first of the three Fong cuts below was engineered by FB (and at about 4:35 into the track you'll notice he has depressed the "Totally Bananas" button); the second track, "Roger + Rerun," would have been the act's breakthrough track if it had ever broken through anything; and the final cut is a version of the Fong classic "AFC" featuring a bone-chilling vocal by alternate bassist The Postman.